Feminism on Attack!

Stephanie Zvan

If you haven’t read Helen Lewis’s piece on the virulent misogyny women face when writing online, you should:

You always remember the first time someone calls you ugly on the internet. I imagine — although it hasn’t happened to me — you always remember the first time someone threatens to rape you, or kill you, or urinate on you.

You should also read the follow-up:

Then there was the suggestion that feminists, in fact, liked this kind of abuse because they enjoyed feeling victimised, as it made them feel justified. That’s one straight out of the “she was asking for it” playbook.

Seriously, read them both. Just know that it may be difficult to do from Twitter:

And even then, you may have to get through Google warning you that one of the articles is on a web site reported to be malicious. At the New Statesman.

Now admittedly, it is happening to the entire New Statesman. It’s possible there was a bad ad or something else that got them flagged. The timing amuses me, though. I see one of these screens and I think of the old, ugly anti-VD army posters. Keep yourself pure! Watch out for those women online!

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Feminism on Attack!

About the author

Stephanie Zvan is one of the hosts for the Minnesota Atheists' radio show and podcast, Atheists Talk. She serves on the board of Secular Woman. She speaks on science and skepticism in a number of venues, including science fiction and fantasy conventions. Stephanie has been called a science blogger and a sex blogger, but if it means she has to choose just one thing to be or blog about, she's decided she's never going to grow up. In addition to science and sex and the science of sex, you'll find quite a bit of politics here, some economics, a regular short fiction feature, and the occasional bit of concentrated weird. Oh, and arguments. She sometimes indulges in those as well. But I'm sure everything will be just fine. Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.
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3 thoughts on “Feminism on Attack!”

  1. sg
    1

    It’s probably a bad ad.

    “Of the 32 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 5 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2011-11-06, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 2011-11-06.

    Malicious software includes 5 scripting exploit(s), 5 exploit(s), 1 trojan(s). Successful infection resulted in an average of 7 new process(es) on the target machine.”

    etc.

    I would not go near that site right now without using NoScript and/or RequestPolicy.

  2. Midnight Rambler
    2

    It’s also not happening at the entire New Statesman, only at the blogs section. And it only began on the 4th at the earliest; when I went there this morning the Google warning came up but it said the last check was on the 3rd and there had been no infections.

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